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The fourth act, which is entirely superfluous, is devoted to the adventures in the enchanted garden of Ubaldo and a Danish knight, two Crusaders who have set forth with the intention of rescuing Rinaldo from the clutches of the sorceress. The fifth act takes place in Armida's palace. Rinaldo's proud spirit has at length been subdued, and he is completely the slave of the enchantress.
Rinaldo and a woman tended him. The sign of his reviving strength was shown by a complaint he launched at the earthy smell of the place. "It is like death," said Rinaldo, coming to his side. "I am used to it, and familiar with death too," he added in a musical undertone. "Are you also a prisoner here?" Wilfrid questioned him. "I am." "The brute does not kill, then?" "No; he saves.
Rinaldo saw at a glance that the Moorish prince was a champion worthy of his arm, and gladly accepted the defiance. The combat was stoutly maintained for a time; but now fortune declared decisively in favor of the infidel army, and Charlemagne's forces gave way at all points in irreparable confusion.
Orlando is one of Handel's most original operas; he seems always to have derived a peculiar inspiration from the poems of Tasso and Ariosto, as in the case of Rinaldo.
Upon their confession Rinaldo's horse was restored to him, as were also his clothes and money; so that he lost nothing except a pair of garters, of which the robbers knew not where they had bestowed them. Wherefore Rinaldo, giving thanks to God and St. Julian, mounted his horse, and returned home safe and sound, and on the morrow the three robbers kicked heels in the wind.
For Dares Phrygius reports of Hector that he was slain cowardly; AEneas, according to the best account, slew not Mezentius, but was slain by him; and the chronicles of Italy tell us little of that Rinaldo d'Este who conquers Jerusalem in Tasso. He might be a champion of the Church, but we know not that he was so much as present at the siege.
On the day when, with his brothers, he had received the honor of knighthood from the Emperor he had sworn never to bind a sword to his side till he had wrested one from some famous knight. Rinaldo took his way to the forest of Arden, celebrated for so many adventures.
Armida, the niece of the wizard king of Damascus, is incited to go to their camp under false pretences, and endeavour to weaken it; which she does by seducing away many of the knights, and sowing a discord which ends in the flight of Rinaldo. PART II. Armida, after making the knights feel the power of her magic, dismisses them bound prisoners for Damascus. They are rescued on their way by Rinaldo.
As Rinaldo approached, the giant assailed him with his club. Rinaldo defended himself from the giant's blows, and gave him one in return, which, if his skin had not been of the toughest, would have finished the combat. But the giant, though wounded, escaped, and let loose the griffin.
He accordingly arrived in Padua at the age of sixteen and a half, and fulfilled his legal destiny by writing the poem of Rinaldo, which was published in the course of less than two years at Venice.
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